Tugboat worker pay rise hope as Svitzer drops EBA threat

The nation’s biggest tugboat operator, Svitzer, has dropped its controversial bid to terminate its enterprise agreement.

The nation’s biggest tugboat operator, Svitzer, has finally withdrawn its controversial bid to terminate its enterprise agreement, increasing the prospect of a settlement with three maritime unions for a new deal.

Six months after the Fair Work Commission found Svitzer engineered an economically damaging Qantas-style lockout of workers to try to bring bargaining with maritime unions to an end, the company formally withdrew its termination application.

A Svitzer spokesman said the company had been bargaining exhaustively with the three unions for the past four months.

“Unfortunately, despite significant efforts by Svitzer to reach a compromise we have not yet reached an agreement,” the spokesman said. “However, in further efforts to find a resolution, on Friday (April 14) Svitzer agreed to withdraw its application to terminate the enterprise agreement.”

Negotiations between Svitzer and the unions will continue, with the assistance of the commission until May 31. The parties have agreed not to take any industrial action during this period.

“Our focus remains on reaching a new, fair agreement – one that recognises the commonsense changes we need to make and addresses the legacy practices that place significant restrictions on … the productivity of Australia’s ports,” the spokesman said.

The Maritime Union of Australia said the company had agreed to “abandon its reckless and implausible legal action to cancel the EBA of almost 600 tugboat workers around Australia”. The agreement expired in 2019.

“Tugboat workers have been denied a pay rise for over four years as this process has been deliberately strung out by Svitzer’s managers and lawyers, with the added threat of complete termination hanging over their heads,” the union’s assistant national secretary, Jamie Newlyn, said.

“Removing this threat will allow us to move forward constructively, and the three maritime unions will now work towards finalising a new agreement with Svitzer that delivers a fair pay rise along with the safety and job security measures.”

A full bench of the commission, headed by now president Adam Hatcher, last November decided to suspend the industrial action for six months, rather than terminate the action.

Terminating the action would have cleared the way for matters between the tug boat operator and the three unions to be arbitrated by the commission.

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke had backed termination of the action but welcomed the commission decision, saying Svitzer “should be ashamed of ­itself for its willingness to hold the economy to ransom”.

The full bench said a termination order would have deprived the parties of their rights to collectively bargain under the Fair Work Act.

It said the evidence implied Svitzer’s threatened indefinite lockout of harbour towage employees was primarily for the purpose of “engineering” a situation where bargaining and the use of protected industrial action would be brought to an end.